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For this purpose, he devises tariff laws, tax laws, relief laws, and school laws. This is so true that, if by chance, the socialists have any doubts about the success of these combinations, they will demand that a small portion of mankind be set aside to experiment upon. The popular idea of trying all systems is well known. And one socialist leader has been known seriously to demand that the Constituent Assembly give him a small district with all its inhabitants, to try his experiments upon.
In the same manner, an inventor makes a model before he constructs the full-sized machine; the chemist wastes some chemicals—the farmer wastes some seeds and land—to try out an idea. But what a difference there is between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his elements, between the farmer and his seeds!
It is no wonder that the writers of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial creation of the legislator's genius. This idea—the fruit of classical education—has taken possession of all the intellectuals and famous writers of our country. To these intellectuals and writers, the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.
Moreover, even where they have consented to recognize a principle of action in the heart of man—and a principle of discernment in man's intellect—they have considered these gifts from God to be fatal gifts. They have thought that persons, under the impulse of these two gifts, would fatally tend to ruin themselves. They assume that if the legislators left persons free to follow their own inclinations, they would arrive at atheism instead of religion, ignorance instead of knowledge, poverty instead of production and exchange. According to these writers, it is indeed fortunate that Heaven has bestowed upon certain men—governors and legislators—the exact opposite inclinations, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of the rest of the world!
While mankind tends toward evil, the legislators yearn for good; while mankind advances toward darkness, the legislators aspire Edition: Since they have decided that this is the true state of affairs, they then demand the use of force in order to substitute their own inclinations for those of the human race.
Open at random any book on philosophy, politics, or history, and you will probably see how deeply rooted in our country is this idea—the child of classical studies, the mother of socialism. In all of them, you will probably find this idea that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state.
And even worse, it will be stated that mankind tends toward degeneration, and is stopped from this downward course only by the mysterious hand of the legislator. Conventional classical thought everywhere says that behind passive society there is a concealed power called law or legislator or called by some other terminology that designates some unnamed person or persons of undisputed influence and authority which moves, controls, benefits, and improves mankind.
One of the things most strongly impressed by whom? The law assigned to each one his work, which was handed down from father to son. No one was permitted to have two professions. Nor could a person change from one job to another But there was one task to which all were forced to conform: Ignorance of religion and of the political regulations of the country was not excused under any circumstances. Moreover, each occupation was assigned by whom? Among the good laws, one of the best was that everyone was trained by whom?
As a result of this, Egypt was filled with wonderful inventions, and nothing was neglected that could make life easy and quiet. Thus, according to Bossuet, persons derive nothing from themselves. Patriotism, prosperity, inventions, husbandry, science—all of these are given to the people by the operation of the laws, the rulers. All that the people have to do is to bow to leadership. Bossuet carries this idea of the state as the source of all progress even so far as to defend the Egyptians against the charge that they rejected wrestling and music.
How is that possible? These arts were invented by Trismegistus [who was alleged to have been Chancellor to the Egyptian god Osiris]. One of the first responsibilities of the prince was to encourage agriculture Just as there were offices established for the regulation of armies, just so were there offices for the direction of farm work The Persian people were inspired with an overwhelming respect for royal authority. And according to Bossuet, the Greek people, although exceedingly intelligent, had no sense of personal responsibility; like dogs and horses, they themselves could not have invented the most simple games:.
The Greeks, naturally intelligent and courageous, had been early cultivated by the kings and settlers who had come from Egypt. From these Egyptian rulers, the Greek people had learned bodily exercises, foot races, and horse and chariot races But the best thing that the Egyptians had taught the Greeks was to become docile, and to permit themselves to be formed by the law for the public good.
It cannot be disputed that these classical theories [advanced by these latter-day teachers, writers, legislators, economists, and philosophers] held that everything came to the people from a source outside themselves. As another example, take Fenelon [archbishop, author, and instructor to the Duke of Burgundy]. He was a witness to the power of Louis XIV. This, plus the fact that he was nurtured in the classical studies and the admiration of antiquity, naturally caused Fenelon to accept the idea that mankind should be passive; that the misfortunes and the prosperity—vices and virtues—of people are caused by the external influence exercised upon them by the law and the legislators.
Thus, in his Utopia of Salentum, he puts men—with all their interests, faculties, desires, and possessions under the absolute discretion of the legislator. Whatever the issue may be, persons do not decide it for themselves; the prince decides for them. The prince is depicted as the soul of this shapeless mass of people who form the nation.
In the prince resides the thought, the foresight, all progress, and the principle of all organization. Thus all responsibility rests with him. The whole of the tenth book of Fenelon's Telemachus proves this. I refer the reader to it, and content myself with quoting at random from this celebrated work to which, in every other respect, I am the first to pay homage.
With the amazing credulity which is typical of the classicists, Fenelon ignores the authority of reason and facts when he attributes the general happiness of the Egyptians, not to their own wisdom but to the wisdom of their kings:. We could not turn our eyes to either shore without seeing rich towns and country estates most agreeably located; fields, never fallowed, covered with golden crops every year; meadows full of flocks; workers bending under the weight of the fruit which the earth lavished upon its cultivators; shepherds who made the echoes resound with the soft notes from their pipes and flutes.
Later, Mentor desired that I observe the contentment and abundance which covered all Egypt, where twenty-two thousand cities could be counted. He admired the good police regulations in the cities; the justice rendered in favor of the poor against the rich; the sound education of the children in obedience, labor, sobriety, and the love of the arts and letters; the exactness with which all religious ceremonies were performed; the unselfishness, the high regard for honor, the faithfulness to men, and the fear of the gods Edition: He never stopped admiring the prosperity of the country. All that you see in this wonderful island results from the laws of Minos.
The education which he ordained for the children makes their bodies strong and robust. From the very beginning, one accustoms the children to a life of frugality and labor, because one assumes that all pleasures of the senses weaken both body and mind. Thus one allows them no pleasure except that of becoming invincible by virtue, and of acquiring glory Here one punishes three vices that go unpunished among other people: There is no need to punish persons for pomp and dissipation, for they are unknown in Crete No costly furniture, no magnificent clothing, no delicious feasts, no gilded palaces are permitted.
Thus does Mentor prepare his student to mold and to manipulate—doubtless with the best of intentions—the people Edition: And to convince the student of the wisdom of these ideas, Mentor recites to him the example of Salentum. It is from this sort of philosophy that we receive our first political ideas! We are taught to treat persons much as an instructor in agriculture teaches farmers to prepare and tend the soil. To maintain the spirit of commerce, it is necessary that all the laws must favor it. These laws, by proportionately dividing up the fortunes as they are made in commerce, should provide every poor citizen with sufficiently easy circumstances to enable him to work like the others.
These same laws should put every rich citizen in such lowered circumstances as to force him to work in order to keep or to gain. Although real equality is the soul of the state in a democracy, yet this is so difficult to establish that an extreme precision in this matter would not always be desirable. It is sufficient that there be established a census to reduce or fix these differences in wealth within a certain limit. After this is done, it remains for Edition: In Greece, there were two kinds of republics.
One, Sparta, was military; the other, Athens, was commercial. In the former, it was desired that the citizens be idle; in the latter, love of labor was encouraged. Note the marvelous genius of these legislators: By debasing all established customs—by mixing the usual concepts of all virtues—they knew in advance that the world would admire their wisdom. Lycurgus gave stability to his city of Sparta by combining petty thievery with the soul of justice; by combining the most complete bondage with the most extreme liberty; by combining the most atrocious beliefs with the greatest moderation.
He appeared to deprive his city of all its resources, arts, commerce, money, and defenses. In Sparta, ambition went without the hope of material reward. Natural affection found no outlet because a man was neither son, husband, nor father. Even chastity was no longer considered becoming. By this road, Lycurgus led Sparta on to greatness and glory. This boldness which was to be found in the institutions of Greece has been repeated in the midst of Edition: An occasional honest legislator has molded a people in whom integrity appears as natural as courage in the Spartans.
William Penn, for example, is a true Lycurgus. Penn had peace as his objectivity—while Lycurgus had war as his objective they resemble each other in that their moral prestige over free men allowed them to overcome prejudices, to subdue passions, and to lead their respective peoples into new paths.
The country of Paraguay furnishes us with another example [of a people who, for their own good, are molded by their legislators]. Now it is true that if one considers the sheer pleasure of commanding to be the greatest joy in life, he contemplates a crime against society; it will, however, always be a noble ideal to govern men in a manner that will make them happier. Those who desire to establish similar institutions must do as follows: Establish common ownership of property as in the republic of Plato; revere the gods as Plato commanded; prevent foreigners from mingling with the people, in order to preserve the customs; let Edition: The legislators should supply arts instead of luxuries; they should satisfy needs instead of desires.
Those who are subject to vulgar infatuation may exclaim: You have the nerve to call that fine? These random selections from the writings of Montesquieu show that he considers persons, liberties, property—mankind itself—to be nothing but materials for legislators to exercise their wisdom upon. Now let us examine Rousseau on this subject. This writer on public affairs is the supreme authority of the democrats.
And although he bases the social structure upon the will of the people, he has, to a greater extent than anyone else, completely accepted the theory of the total inertness of mankind in the presence of the legislators:. If it is true that a great prince is rare, then is it not true that a great legislator is even more rare? The prince has only to follow the pattern that the legislator creates. The legislator is the mechanic who invents the Edition: And what part do persons play in all this?
They are merely the machine that is set in motion. In fact, are they not merely considered to be the raw material of which the machine is made? Thus the same relationship exists between the legislator and the prince as exists between the agricultural expert and the farmer; and the relationship between the prince and his subjects is the same as that between the farmer and his land. How high above mankind, then, has this writer on public affairs been placed? Rousseau rules over legislators themselves, and teaches them their trade in these imperious terms:. Would you give stability to the state?
Then bring the extremes as closely together as possible. Tolerate neither wealthy persons nor beggars.
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If the soil is poor or barren, or the country too small for its inhabitants, then turn to industry and arts, and trade these products for the foods that you need On a fertile soil—if you are short of inhabitants—devote all your attention to agriculture, because this multiplies people; banish the arts, because they only serve to depopulate the nation If you have extensive and accessible coast lines, then cover the sea with merchant ships; you will have a brilliant but short existence.
If your seas wash only Edition: In short, and in addition to the maxims that are common to all, every people has its own particular circumstances. And this fact in itself will cause legislation appropriate to the circumstances. This is the reason why the Hebrews formerly—and, more recently, the Arabs —had religion as their principle objective. The objective of the Athenians was literature; of Carthage and Tyre, commerce; of Rhodes, naval affairs; of Sparta, war; and of Rome, virtue. The author of The Spirit of Laws has shown by what art the legislator should direct his institutions toward each of these objectives But suppose that the legislator mistakes his proper objective, and acts on a principle different from that indicated by the nature of things?
Suppose that the selected principle sometimes creates slavery, and sometimes liberty; sometimes wealth, and sometimes population; sometimes peace, and sometimes conquest? This confusion of objective will slowly enfeeble the law and impair the constitution. The state will be subjected to ceaseless agitations until it is destroyed or changed, and invincible nature regains her empire. But if nature is sufficiently invincible to regain its empire, why does not Rousseau admit that it did not need the legislator Edition: Why does he not see that men, by obeying their own instincts, would turn to farming on fertile soil, and to commerce on an extensive and easily accessible coast, without the interference of a Lycurgus or a Solon or a Rousseau who might easily be mistaken.
Be that as it may, Rousseau invests the creators, organizers, directors, legislators, and controllers of society with a terrible responsibility. He is, therefore, most exacting with them:. He who would dare to undertake the political creation of a people ought to believe that he can, in a manner of speaking, transform human nature; transform each individual—who, by himself, is a solitary and perfect whole—into a mere part of a greater whole from which the individual will henceforth receive his life and being.
Thus the person who would undertake the political creation of a people should believe in his ability to alter man's constitution; to strengthen it; to substitute for the physical and independent existence received from nature, an existence which is partial and moral. What would become of a person's dignity if it were entrusted to the followers of Rousseau?
Now let us examine Raynal on this subject of mankind being molded by the legislator:. The legislator must first consider the climate, the air, and the soil. The resources at his disposal determine his duties. He must first consider his locality. A population living on maritime shores must have laws designed for navigation If it is an inland settlement, the legislator must make his plans according to the nature and fertility of the soil It is especially in the distribution of property that the genius of the legislator will be found.
As a general rule, when a new colony is established in any country, sufficient land should be given to each man to support his family On an uncultivated island that you are populating with children, you need do nothing but let the seeds of truth germinate along with the development of reason But when you resettle a nation with a past into a Edition: If you desire to prevent these opinions and customs from becoming permanent, you will secure the second generation by a general system of public education for the children.
A prince or a legislator should never establish a colony without first arranging to send wise men along to instruct the youth In a new colony, ample opportunity is open to the careful legislator who desires to purify the customs and manners of the people. If he has virtue and genius, the land and the people at his disposal will inspire his soul with a plan for society. A writer can only vaguely trace the plan in advance because it is necessarily subject to the instability of all hypotheses; the problem has many forms, complications, and circumstances that are difficult to foresee and settle in detail.
Raynal's instructions to the legislators on how to manage people may be compared to a professor of agriculture lecturing his students: His resources determine his procedure. If his soil is clay, he must do so and so. If his soil is sand, he must act in another manner. Every facility is open to the farmer who wishes to clear and improve his soil.
If he is skillful Edition: A professor can only vaguely trace this plan in advance because it is necessarily subject to the instability of all hypotheses; the problem has many forms, complications, and circumstances that are difficult to foresee and settle in detail. Here is Mably on this subject of the law and the legislator. In the passages preceding the one here quoted, Mably has supposed the laws, due to a neglect of security, to be worn out. He continues to address the reader thusly:. Under these circumstances, it is obvious that the springs of government are slack.
Give them a new tension, and the evil will be cured Think less of punishing faults, and more of rewarding that which you need. In this manner you will restore to your republic the vigor of youth. Because free people have been ignorant of this procedure, they have lost their liberty! But if the evil has made such headway that ordinary Edition: The imagination of the citizens needs to be struck a hard blow.
Under the influence of teaching like this—which stems from classical education—there came a time when everyone wished to place himself above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it in his own way. Next let us examine Condillac on this subject of the legislators and mankind:. My Lord, assume the character of Lycurgus or of Solon. And before you finish reading this essay, amuse yourself by giving laws to some savages in America or Africa.
Confine these nomads to fixed dwellings; teach them to tend flocks Attempt to develop the social consciousness that nature has planted in them Force them to begin to practice the duties of humanity Use punishment to cause sensual pleasures to become distasteful to them. Then you will see that every point of your legislation will cause these savages to lose a vice and gain a virtue.
All people have had laws. But few people have been happy. Why is this so? Because the legislators themselves have almost always been ignorant of the purpose of society, which is the uniting of families by a common interest. Impartiality in law consists of two things: As the laws establish greater equality, they become proportionately more precious to every citizen When all men are equal in wealth and dignity—and when the laws leave no hope of disturbing this equality—how can men then be agitated by greed, ambition, dissipation, idleness, sloth, envy, hatred, or jealousy?
What you have learned about the republic of Sparta should enlighten you on this question. No other state has ever had laws more in accord with the order of nature; of equality. Actually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything—form, face, energy, movement, life—from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius.
These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. And antiquity presents everywhere—in Egypt, Persia, Greece,. But this does not prove that this situation is desirable. It proves only that since men and society are capable of improvement, it is naturally to be expected that error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition should be greatest towards the origins of history.
The writers quoted above were not in error when they found ancient institutions to be such, but they were in error when they offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations.
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Uncritical and childish conformists, they took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world. They did not understand that knowledge appears and grows with the passage of time; and that in proportion to this growth of knowledge, might takes the side of right, and society regains possession of itself. Actually, what is the political struggle that we witness? It is the instinctive struggle of all people toward liberty. And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world?
Is it not the union of all liberties—liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, of labor, of trade? In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism—including, of course, legal despotism? Finally, is not Edition: It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire—learned from the teachings of antiquity—that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.
While society is struggling toward liberty, these famous men who put themselves at its head are filled with the spirit of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their own imaginations. This was especially true in No sooner was the old regime destroyed than society was subjected to still other artificial arrangements, always starting from the same point: Listen to the ideas of a few of the writers and politicians during that period:.
The legislator commands the future. The function of government is to direct the physical and moral powers of the nation toward the end for which the commonwealth has come into being. A people who are to be returned to liberty must be formed anew. A strong force and vigorous action are necessary to destroy old prejudices, to change old customs, to correct depraved affections, to restrict superfluous wants, and to destroy ingrained vices Citizens, the inflexible austerity of Lycurgus created the firm foundation of the Spartan republic.
The weak and trusting character of Solon plunged Athens into slavery. This parallel embraces the whole science of government. Considering the extent of human degradation, I am convinced that it is necessary to effect a total regeneration and, if I may so express myself, of creating a new people.
Again, it is claimed that persons are nothing but raw material. It is not for them to will their own improvement; they are incapable of it. According to Saint-Just, only the legislator is capable of doing this. Persons are merely to be what the legislator wills them to be. According to Robespierre, who copies Edition: Once this is determined, the government has only to direct the physical and moral forces of the nation toward that end.
Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the nation are to remain completely passive. And according to the teachings of Billaud-Varennes, the people should have no prejudices, no affections, and no desires except those authorized by the legislator. He even goes so far as to say that the inflexible austerity of one man is the foundation of a republic.
In cases where the alleged evil is so great that ordinary governmental procedures cannot cure it, Mably recommends a dictatorship to promote virtue: The principle of the republican government is virtue, and the means required to establish virtue is terror. In our country we desire to substitute morality for selfishness, honesty for honor, principles for customs, duties for manners, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, contempt of vice for contempt of poverty, pride for insolence, greatness of soul for vanity, love of glory for love of money, good people for good companions, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for glitter, the charm of happiness for the Edition: At what a tremendous height above the rest of mankind does Robespierre here place himself!
And note the arrogance with which he speaks. He is not content to pray for a great reawakening of the human spirit. Nor does he expect such a result from a well-ordered government. No, he himself will remake mankind, and by means of terror. This mass of rotten and contradictory statements is extracted from a discourse by Robespierre in which he aims to explain the principles of morality which ought to guide a revolutionary government. Note that Robespierre's request for dictatorship is not made merely for the purpose of repelling a foreign invasion or putting down the opposing groups.
Rather he wants a dictatorship in order that he may use terror to force upon the country his own principles of morality. He says that this act is only to be a temporary measure preceding a new constitution. But in reality, he desires nothing short of using terror to extinguish from France selfishness, honor, customs, manners, fashion, vanity, love of money, good companionship, intrigue, wit, sensuousness, Edition: Not until he, Robespierre, shall have accomplished these miracles, as he so rightly calls them, will he permit the law to reign again. Usually, however, these gentlemen—the reformers, the legislators, and the writers on public affairs—do not desire to impose direct despotism upon mankind.
Oh no, they are too moderate and philanthropic for such direct action. Instead, they turn to the law for this despotism, this absolutism, this omnipotence. They desire only to make the laws. To show the prevalence of this queer idea in France, I would need to copy not only the entire works of Mably, Raynal, Rousseau, and Fenelon—plus long extracts from Bossuet and Montesquieu—but also the entire proceedings of the Convention.
I shall do no such thing; I merely refer the reader to them. It is, of course, not at all surprising that this same idea should have greatly appealed to Napoleon. He embraced it Edition: Like a chemist, Napoleon considered all Europe to be material for his experiments. But, in due course, this material reacted against him. Helena, Napoleon—greatly disillusioned—seemed to recognize some initiative in mankind. Recognizing this, he became less hostile to liberty. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from leaving this lesson to his son in his will: After all this, it is hardly necessary to quote the same opinions from Morelly, Babeuf, Owen, Saint-Simon, and Fourier.
Here are, however, a few extracts from Louis Blanc's book on the organization of labor: The impulse behind this momentum is to be supplied by the plan of Louis Blanc; his plan is to be forced upon society; the society referred to is the human race. Thus the human race is to receive its momentum from Louis Blanc. Now it will be said that the people are free to accept or to reject this plan. Admittedly, people are free to accept or to reject advice from whomever they wish. But this is not the way in which Mr. Louis Blanc understands the matter.
He expects that his plan will be legalized, and thus forcibly imposed upon the people by the power of the law:. In our plan, the state has only to pass labor laws nothing else? The state merely places society on an incline that is all? But what is this incline that is indicated by Mr. Does it not lead to an abyss? No, it leads to happiness. If this is true, then why does not society go there of its own choice? Because society does not know what it wants; it must be propelled. What is to propel it? And who is to supply the impulse for this power? Why, the inventor of the machine—in this instance, Mr.
We shall never escape from this circle: Once on this incline, will society enjoy some liberty? And what is liberty, Mr. Once and for all, liberty is not only a mere granted right; it is also the power granted to a person to use and to develop his faculties under a reign of justice and under the protection of the law. And this is no pointless distinction; its meaning is deep and its consequences are difficult to estimate.
For once it is agreed that a person, to be truly free, must have the power to use and develop his faculties, Edition: It also follows that every person has a claim on society for tools of production, without which human activity cannot be fully effective. Now by what action can society give to every person the necessary education and the necessary tools of production, if not by the action of the state?
Thus, again, liberty is power.
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Of what does this power consist? Of being educated and of being given the tools of production. Who is to give the education and the tools of production? Society, which owes them to everyone. By what action is society to give tools of production to those who do not own them? Why, by the action of the state. And from whom will the state take them?
Let the reader answer that question. Let him also notice the direction in which this is taking us. The strange phenomenon of our times—one which will probably astound our descendants—is the doctrine based on this triple hypothesis: These three ideas form the sacred symbol of those who proclaim themselves totally democratic. The advocates of this doctrine also profess to be social. So far as they are democratic, they place unlimited faith in mankind. But so far as they are social, they regard mankind as little better than mud.
Let us examine this contrast in greater detail. What is the attitude of the democrat when political rights are under discussion? How does he regard the people when a legislator is to be chosen? Ah, then it is claimed that the people have an instinctive wisdom; they are gifted with the finest perception; their will is always right; the general will cannot err; voting cannot be too universal.
When it is time to vote, apparently the voter is not to be asked for any guarantee of his wisdom. His will and capacity to choose wisely are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? Have they not won their rights by great effort and sacrifice? Have they not given ample proof of their intelligence and wisdom?
Are they not adults? Are they not capable of judging for themselves? Do they not know what is best for themselves? Is there a class or a man who would be so bold as to set himself above the people, and judge and act for them? No, no, the people are and should be free. They desire to manage their own affairs, and they shall do so. But when the legislator is finally elected—ah!
The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; Edition: Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation.
Considerant has assured us that liberty leads inevitably to monopoly! We understand that liberty means competition. But according to Mr. Louis Blanc, competition is a system that ruins the businessmen and exterminates the people. It is for this reason that free people are ruined and exterminated in proportion to their degree of freedom. Louis Blanc should observe the results of competition in, for example, Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States.
Louis Blanc also tells us that competition leads to monopoly. And by the same reasoning, he thus informs us that low prices lead to high prices; that competition drives production to destructive activity; that competition drains away the sources of purchasing power; that competition forces an increase in production while, at the same time, it forces a decrease in consumption. From this, it follows that free people produce for the Edition: Louis Blanc absolutely must attend to it.
Well, what liberty should the legislators permit people to have? But if this were permitted, we would see the people taking this opportunity to become atheists. Then liberty of education? But parents would pay professors to teach their children immorality and falsehoods; besides, according to Mr. Thiers, if education were left to national liberty, it would cease to be national, and we would be teaching our children the ideas of the Turks or Hindus; whereas, thanks to this legal despotism over education, our children now have the good fortune to be taught the noble ideas of the Romans.
Then liberty of labor? But that would mean competition which, in turn, leaves production unconsumed, ruins businessmen, and exterminates the people. Perhaps liberty of trade? But everyone knows—and the advocates of protective tariffs have proved over and over again—that freedom of trade ruins every person who engages in it, and that it is necessary to suppress freedom of trade in order to prosper.
Possibly then, liberty of association? But, according to socialist doctrine, true liberty and voluntary association are in Edition: Clearly then, the conscience of the social democrats cannot permit persons to have any liberty because they believe that the nature of mankind tends always toward every kind of degradation and disaster. Thus, of course, the legislators must make plans for the people in order to save them from themselves. This line of reasoning brings us to a challenging question: The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?
Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and Edition: They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep.
Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority. Please understand that I do not dispute their right to invent social combinations, to advertise them, to advocate them, and to try them upon themselves, at their own expense and risk.
But I do dispute their right to impose these plans upon us by law—by force—and to compel us to pay for them with our taxes. I do not insist that the supporters of these various social schools of thought—the Proudhonists, the Cabetists, the Fourierists, the Universitarists, and the Protectionists—renounce their various ideas. I insist only that they renounce this one idea that they have in common: They need only to give up the idea of forcing us to acquiesce to their groups and series, their socialized projects, their free-credit banks, their Graeco-Roman concept of morality, and their commercial regulations.
I ask only that we be permitted to decide upon these plans for ourselves; that we not be forced to accept them, directly or indirectly, if we find them to be contrary to our best interests or repugnant to our consciences. But these organizers desire access to the tax funds and to the power of the law in order to carry out their plans.
In addition to being oppressive and unjust, this desire also implies the fatal supposition that the organizer is infallible and mankind is incompetent. But, again, if persons are incompetent to judge for themselves, then why all this talk about universal suffrage? This contradiction in ideas is, unfortunately but logically, reflected in events in France. For example, Frenchmen have led all other Europeans in obtaining their rights—or, more accurately, their political demands. Yet this fact has in no respect prevented us from becoming the most governed, the most regulated, the most imposed upon, the most harnessed, and the most exploited people in Europe.
France also leads all other nations as the one where revolutions are constantly to be anticipated. And under the circumstances, it is quite natural that this should be the case. And this will remain the case so long as our politicians continue to accept this idea that has been so well expressed by Mr. As long as these ideas prevail, it is clear that the responsibility of government is enormous.
Good fortune and bad fortune, wealth and destitution, equality and inequality, virtue and vice—all then depend upon political administration. It is burdened with everything, it undertakes everything, it does everything; therefore it is responsible for everything. If we are fortunate, then government has a claim to our gratitude; but if we are unfortunate, then government must bear the blame. For are not our persons and property now at the disposal of government?
Is not the law omnipotent? In creating a monopoly of education, the government must answer to the hopes of the fathers of families who have thus been deprived of their liberty; and if these hopes are shattered, whose fault is it? In regulating industry, the government has contracted to make it prosper; otherwise it is absurd to deprive industry of its liberty. And if industry now suffers, whose fault is it? In meddling with the balance of trade by playing with tariffs, the government thereby contracts to make trade prosper; and if this results in destruction instead of prosperity, whose fault is it?
In giving the maritime industries protection in exchange for their liberty, the government undertakes to make them profitable; and if they become a burden to the taxpayers, whose fault is it? Thus there is not a grievance in the nation for which the Edition: Is it surprising, then, that every failure increases the threat of another revolution in France? And what remedy is proposed for this?
To extend indefinitely the domain of the law; that is, the responsibility of government. But if the government undertakes to control and to raise wages, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to care for all who may be in want, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to support all unemployed workers, and cannot do it; if the government undertakes to lend interest-free money to all borrowers, and cannot do it; if, in these words that we regret to say escaped from the pen of Mr.
Is it not certain that after every government failure—which, alas! A science of economics must be developed before a science of politics can be logically formulated. Essentially, economics is the science of determining whether the interests of human beings are harmonious or antagonistic. This must be known before a science of politics can be formulated to determine the proper functions of government.
Immediately following the development of a science of economics, and at the very beginning of the formulation of a science of politics, this all-important question must be answered: What ought it to be? What is its scope; its limits? Logically, at what point do the just powers of the legislator stop? I do not hesitate to answer: Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice. In short, law is justice. It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property.
The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety. It is not true that the function of law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our wills, our education, our opinions, our work, our trade, our talents, or our pleasures. The function of law is to protect the free exercise of these rights, and to prevent any person from interfering with the free exercise of these same rights by any other person. Since law necessarily requires the support of force, its lawful Edition: Every individual has the right to use force for lawful self-defense.
It is for this reason that the collective force—which is only the organized combination of the individual forces—may lawfully be used for the same purpose; and it cannot be used legitimately for any other purpose. Law is solely the organization of the individual right of self-defense which existed before law was formalized. The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect persons and property. Furthermore, it must not be said that the law may be philanthropic if, in the process, it refrains from oppressing persons and plundering them of their property; this would be a contradiction.
The law cannot avoid having an effect upon persons and property; and if the law acts in any manner except to protect them, its actions then necessarily violate the liberty of persons and their right to own property. The law is justice—simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable.
Justice is neither more than this nor less than this. If you exceed this proper limit—if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, literary, or artistic—you will then be lost in an uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it upon you.
This is true because fraternity and philanthropy, unlike justice, do not have precise limits. Once started, where will you stop? And where will the law stop itself? Considerant would sponsor the cause of the labor groups; he would use the law to secure for them a guaranteed minimum of clothing, housing, food, and all other necessities of life.
Louis Blanc would say—and with reason—that these minimum guarantees are merely the beginning of complete fraternity; he would say that the law should give tools of production and free education to all working people. Another person would observe that this arrangement would still leave room for inequality; he would claim that the law should give to everyone even in the most inaccessible hamlet—luxury, literature, and art.
All of these proposals are the high road to communism; legislation Edition: In this proposition a simple and enduring government can be conceived. And I defy anyone to say how even the thought of revolution, of insurrection, of the slightest uprising could arise against a government whose organized force was confined only to suppressing injustice. Under such a regime, there would be the most prosperity—and it would be the most equally distributed.
As for the sufferings that are inseparable from humanity, no one would even think of accusing the government for them. This is true because, if the force of government were limited to suppressing injustice, then government would be as innocent of these sufferings as it is now innocent of changes in the temperature. As proof of this statement, consider this question: Have the people ever been known to rise against the Court of Appeals, or mob a Justice of the Peace, in order to get higher wages, free credit, tools of production, favorable tariffs, or government-created jobs? Everyone knows perfectly well that such matters are not within the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals or a Justice of the Peace.
And if government were limited to its proper functions, everyone would soon learn that these matters are not within the jurisdiction of the law itself. But make the laws upon the principle of fraternity—proclaim Edition: And it would indeed be strange if law could properly be anything else!
Is not justice right? Are not rights equal? By what right does the law force me to conform to the social plans of Mr. If the law has a moral right to do this, why does it not, then, force these gentlemen to submit to my plans? Is it logical to suppose that nature has not given me sufficient imagination to dream up a utopia also? Should the law choose one fantasy among many, and put the organized force of government at its service only?
And let it not be said—as it continually is said—that under this concept, the law would be atheistic, individualistic, and heartless; that it would make mankind in its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, worthy only of those worshippers of government who believe that the law is mankind. Do those worshippers of government believe that free persons will cease to act?
Does it follow that if we receive no energy from the law, we shall receive no energy at all? Does it follow that if the law is restricted to the function of protecting the free use of our faculties, we will be unable to use our faculties? Suppose that the law does not force us to follow Edition: If we are free, does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God? Does it follow that we shall then cease to associate with each other, to help each other, to love and succor our unfortunate brothers, to study the secrets of nature, and to strive to improve ourselves to the best of our abilities?
And it is under the law of justice—under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility—that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve—slowly, no doubt, but certainly—God's design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity. It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion—whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government—at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.
And does not experience prove this? Look at the entire world. Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the law least interferes with private affairs; where government is least felt; where the individual has the greatest scope, and free opinion the greatest influence; where administrative powers are fewest and simplest; where taxes are lightest and most nearly equal, and popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable; where individuals and groups most actively assume their responsibilities, and, consequently, where the morals of admittedly imperfect human beings are constantly improving; where trade, assemblies, and associations are the least restricted; where labor, capital, and populations suffer the fewest forced displacements; where mankind most nearly follows its own natural inclinations; where the inventions of men are most nearly in harmony with the laws of God; in short, the happiest, most moral, and most peaceful people are those who most nearly follow this principle: Although mankind is not perfect, still, all hope rests upon the free and voluntary actions of persons within the limits of right; law or force is to be used for nothing except the administration of universal justice.
This must be said: Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it. Now someone will say: But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire. My attitude toward all other persons is well illustrated by this story from a celebrated traveler: He arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born.
A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks—armed with rings, hooks, and cords—surrounded it. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty. God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form. And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty.
Away, then, with quacks and organizers! A way with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
And because its truths are eternal, it will still be read when another century has passed. Frederic Bastiat was a French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before—and immediately following—the Revolution of February This was a period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism.
As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared. And he explained how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism. But most of his countrymen chose to ignore his logic. The Law is here presented again because the same situation exists in America today as in the France of The same socialist-communist ideas and plans that were then adopted in France are now sweeping America.
Thus the memorial to Zane in the Chicago Bar Record declares:. It is related that when [Zane] was a boy at Springfield he used to delight in reading in the Supreme Court Library the old English Year Books; this extraordinary linguistic proficiency attracted the attention of Justice John Scholfield who, regretting his own inability to read the strange language of those tomes, asked the boy why he read them, and the answer was that he wanted to know the story of the law.
Zane completed his undergraduate education at the University of Michigan in , and, like his father, chose to take up the study of the law. Earlier that same year, the elder Zane had been appointed chief justice of the Federal Territorial Court in Utah, and John chose to relocate Edition: John received an appointment as a clerk in the territorial court and commenced to read the law with his father.
Reading the law with an established practitioner was then a common means of legal education. John was admitted to the bar in and spent a total of eleven years, from to , engaged in the practice of law in Utah. By the late s, John Zane had established himself as one of the most important lawyers in Utah. He took a leading role in what was first the territorial and subsequently became the State Bar Association, and published his first academic article, a careful analysis of the language of the state constitution as finally ratified.
He was preparing to move back to his native Illinois—not to Springfield, however, but to Chicago. John Zane had affiliated himself with what became the firm of Shope, Mathis, Edition: Bracton, Thomas More, and Francis Bacon, among others, felicitously adorn these pages.
Zane then proceeded to set out the substantive law of banking in densely written pages. It appears in the reported arguments of counsel before the United States Supreme Court and was Edition: Zane would spend the remainder of his career in Chicago, engaged for the most part in the practice of law, teaching only briefly at the Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Chicago. But Zane did not neglect scholarship.
He maintained the sort of life Edition: Beginning with an article on mining law that appeared in the Harvard Law Review in , he published important articles in leading journals for the next three decades. With Carl Zollmann, he also prepared in the ninth edition of Bishop on Criminal Law , a basic legal treatise that had been in print since the s.
In his later years, Zane threw himself passionately into the Chicago literary scene. He had been a member of the Caxton Club since , and in he was elected its president. The stock market crash of devastated the membership, and Zane was called upon to keep the club alive. He convinced many members to rescind their resignations and devised a variety of expedients to keep the club active despite its desperate financial state, such as luncheon gatherings that featured outstanding public speakers on important issues of the day.
Zane remained active until the very end of his life. He continued to litigate and was reelected president of the Caxton Club in , at the age of seventy-four. To appreciate The Story of Law , it is important to bear in mind that this work is not—and indeed cannot be—a comprehensive history, and that Zane was forced to employ principles of selection in determining what was to be included within his story. The Story of Law remains uniquely valuable as a learned and highly readable account of the shaping of Western law from the Neolithic age to the dawn of the twentieth century.
In a letter to John Wigmore in January , Zane stated:. I do not claim that it is a history of law in general, but it is an attempt to show the great formative elements that determined why law is what it is among us [emphasis in original]. To compress the matter within reasonable Edition: I took the original primeval man, followed him through the great formative institutions that make the great heads of law, then took the Aryan with his developments among the Celts and Gauls and the Hindus, then passed to the contributions of the Semites, Babylonian and Jewish, then showed the original Aryan, Greek, then the Roman, and thence by the mediaeval feudal system to the English.
Necessarily I left out the Egyptian, and the Hellenistic law after Justinian, where I could have done much with the Basilicata, but this system was too late. I also left out the Spanish, French, and German developments, because I was sticking to the trunk of the genealogical tree and then following the English limb. But what I kept in mind was private law as between man and man and the legal rules and institutions through which one citizen obtains his rights against another citizen.
So when I reached the English law I did not pay much attention to the genesis of the political institutions except as they were purely conceived with the production, the modification, and the application of private law. When I reached our legal development I changed to constitutional law, for the reason that we have the unique development by which in a private lawsuit, a machinery is furnished which makes constitutional law binding in private litigation. This I say is the Reign of an Absolute Law.
Perhaps I should have explained this for the benefit of the ordinary reader, but I felt sure that he would catch the drift of the book on its general lines. Chapter by chapter, Zane unravels the evolution of law in Western civilization. To a degree unusual but welcome among legal historians, Zane emphasizes the development of commerce as an integral part of the story of the law. The contributions of Babylon, Greece, and Rome to the Edition: Commerce is the main source of peace and progress in the world, and lawyers who promote its steady development are performing a public service.
The English are especially praised for their integrity in dealing honestly even with their enemies: Washington was a rebel in arms against England but the Bank of England was a commercial institution and here as always the honesty instituted by trade is far superior to any other conception of honest conduct. It is to be regretted, however, that Zane placed little emphasis on the role religious thought played in shaping Western legal principles and institutions. His story is for the most part a secular one, its heroes consisting of urbane Roman lawyers and largely secularized Englishmen and Americans.
As recent scholarship has shown, however, the canon lawyers of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries made an enormous contribution to the history of Western law. Similarly, Zane ignores the contributions of Protestant lawyers, whether in Lutheran Germany or in England in the mid-seventeenth century. But the Lutherans gave to the West a new emphasis on the Ten Commandments as a source of natural-law reasoning as well as new methods for organizing the law, while deeply devout Protestant lawyers such as Sir Matthew Hale —76 —whom Zane dismisses in a few lines because of his participation in witch trials—contributed to the shaping of a new English legal philosophy that stressed continuity with Edition: It has now been seventy years since John Zane published his Story of Law.
Notwithstanding the passage of time, additional research, and newly discovered documents, his account remains in general a highly accurate picture of the development of the law.
Of course, every specialist can think of certain matters important to the development of a particular line of inquiry that were omitted, underemphasized, or perhaps given too much weight. But in the light of his bold and far-reaching commission, Zane executed his assignment admirably. The subject matter is of enthralling interest, and it seems strange that so few attempts have hitherto been made to tell the story of law for the benefit of the general reader.
The book is opportune, for one of the gratifying signs of recent times has been the reaction in the field of literature from the trivial and ephemeral to the serious and permanent. A few years ago it had seemed to some of us—paradoxical as such a conclusion was—that the age of expanding science and wider vision had resulted, with the average man, in an unprecedented dulling of the imagination and an unusual preference for the trivial and unimportant.
I devoted the last four chapters of my book on the Constitution of the United States to the thesis that the evil of our generation was the loss of any true sense of the values of human life, and until recent years I had little occasion to modify this pessimistic conclusion. Then came a remarkable reaction, and the books that were among the best sellers were those which not only dealt with serious and difficult subjects, but attempted to cover the whole field of human development. If a book on philosophy can thus prove a best seller, how much more should a book on the history of the law, for the law is the concrete realization of philosophy.
It is the synthesis of all the speculations of the ages as to the rules of human conduct, imposed in order to protect, not merely society as an organism, but the individual, from evil. Moreover, the law is the microcosmic history of humanity. This book discloses the long wearisome climb of man through the ages to the heights which he now occupies, and from which he is ceaselessly pressing forward to even loftier summits of human achievement. The law concerns every human being. It is always with us, and directs the path of our destiny from the cradle to the grave.
Even after we have joined the great majority, it is the law that determines what disposition shall be made of the property of one who no longer lives to protect his rights, and who, being dead, can have no rights. Moreover, the law is identified with the whole history of human progress, and especially the progress of political society, as successive generations of man have walked with bleeding feet their via dolorosa from slavery to freedom.
The dramatic episodes of history are generally connected with the law, and to every citizen who loves his country the events which have the greatest appeal are within the scope of this book. Our American epic struggle for independence was to vindicate an unwritten law as to the right of taxation, and no episode in our history is of greater dramatic interest and more creditable to the American people than the ability of the Fathers in a time of anarchy to meet in high convention, and, after discussing the fundamentals of human society for over four months, to draft a comprehensive charter of Government.
If this book is fortunate in its subject matter, it is doubly fortunate in its author, and here the writer of this introduction may justifiably indulge in a feeling of satisfaction. The publisher did me the compliment to ask me to suggest some American lawyer to write this book.
I had some familiarity with the outstanding men of the American Bar. As Solicitor General of the United States for four years, I had occasion to meet distinguished living members of the American Bar from all sections of the country. To be asked to suggest the name of one of them was a task at once delicate and difficult.
The difficulty lay in the curious fact that few lawyers are philosophers, and still fewer philosophers are lawyers. The reason is obvious. Philosophy deals with the abstract and law with the concrete, and while every lawyer ought to understand the philosophical basis of the law, he generally finds both his time and energies fully employed in determining what the law is, and he thus has little time for its philosophical justification.
It is enough that it is the law, which the Courts will presumably enforce, and he must reckon with reality and not the abstract. On the other hand, the philosopher, living in the rarefied atmosphere of abstract speculation, has little opportunity to study the practical problems of human laws in concrete application.
It is for this reason, I suppose, that the most learned theorizers on the subject of the law, the learned professors in our law schools, neither have, nor have had, much practical experience in the administration of the law, and, on the other hand, the successful practitioner, who is confined to realities, has too often scant knowledge of the history of the law and its purely philosophical justification, and his attitude to it is a narrowly pragmatic one.
My task, therefore, was to suggest someone who was both a practical lawyer and a true philosopher, and if there be many such at the American Bar, the writer has yet to know them. Even more was required, if this important book was to be worthy of its exalted subject. It required a lawyer who not only had a great gift of lucid expression, but that fine imagination which enables the deep thinker to convey his ideas to minds of a different caliber.
Doubtless there were some philosophers at the Bar who could have written very Edition: Others might have had the requisite clarity in expression, and yet they would lack that fine gift of imagination which makes the true teacher and enables him by charm of direction and telling analogy to hold the attention of readers to a subject which would not ordinarily attract their interest or enlist their sympathies. The writer of this introduction happily recalled the reading of some legal essays of such unusual learning and clarity of diction that they had lingered in his memory.
They were contributed to the Law Journals by a distinguished member of the Chicago Bar, who is the author of this book. I believe I have done the thoughtful readers of this generation a real service in suggesting to the publisher that John M. Zane be invited to expound the history of law to the average man, and I am heartily glad that he consented to do so. Some great jurist once said that every lawyer owes a duty to his profession to write a book, and if so, Mr. Zane has now richly paid his debt, not only to his profession but to the reading public. He has done so with surprising skill, and I know of no lawyer who could have done it better.
Sympathy, imagination, varied knowledge, diction as crystalline clear as a mountain stream, and philosophical insight—all these great qualities are disclosed in these pages. The book is a real contribution to the literature of the day, and it will make its readers, whether lawyers or laymen, better citizens. No jurist has yet achieved a definition of law that does not require the use of the idea of law, either implied or expressed, as a part of the definition.
All will agree that the word in its meaning implies a set both of general principles and of particular rules. Thus we get back to the place whence we started. The fact is that no one can go any further than to say that law is a part, and only a part, of the now large body of rules that govern men in their relations and conduct toward one another in the social organization to which they belong.
Even here we must understand that we include rules which govern men in their relations to the social organization under which they live and that among civilized men law is considered to govern the relations of social organizations toward one another. Rules of law at different times in the past have covered many more human relations than at other times. Generally speaking, the progress and development of law have been in differentiating rules of living that were of sufficient importance to the social organization to be regarded as law, from other rules, once as potent, that have gradually passed into mere social customs.
It is necessary at the outset to lay stress upon the dominating fact of men having always lived in social organizations. It is possibly conceivable that men might have lived as solitary animals, but if they had done so there would have been no laws. The existence of laws presupposes human beings living in a social complex. The science of law, if there is such a science, is but one of the several sciences that are concerned with men living in a social state.
Sociology, ethics, politics, political economy, as well as history, biology and psychology, all have a common ground, for they are all social sciences or have social science aspects. They are all more or less related to each other, and all are necessary to a proper understanding of each science. This truth was happily expressed in the oration of the greatest of Roman advocates for the poet Archias—an oration which, as a whole, reached the highest ground ever attained by a lawyer in a forensic speech. This fact of living in a social state is the fundamental fact for the history of law.
The development of law has been merely one phase of the social development. This legal development has been a wholly natural social process and result, which man could no more have escaped than Edition: So far as the sciences concerned with humanity give us light, men have always lived in society. This means not in the family, but in some social aggregate larger than the mere family of a male and female or females and children. The ordinary idea of human development has been that the family was the original unit, but, as will appear, the evidence to the contrary is so conclusive that it may be considered as settled that a family life was not developed by men until ages after their advent as animals truly and distinctly human beings, though of a low type of mental development as compared with civilized men.
Human animals came out of some lower type of animal with the ways of living of creatures who lived in a herd. Law is, of course, the result of this socially formed mentality in adapting the race to its physical surroundings, and in striving to overcome those surroundings. The time has long gone by when one should apologize for running counter to human conceptions that are founded upon human ignorance, inherited prejudice, or crass stupidity. If the purpose were to write a work upon geography, it would not be necessary to begin with an extended demonstration of the sphericity of the earth, although a few centuries ago a man could, with entire legality, have been burned at the stake for asserting such a proposition.
Isidore, who died a. The story of the law must begin, then, with men as they first were in mind and body countless ages ago. Those original attributes of mind and body, inherited from age to age, practically rule men to-day, though generally in a subconscious or instinctive way. Through those many ages the physical frame of man has remained what it was in the beginning, but his mental development is entitled to be considered the most extraordinary phenomenon of organic life.
The physical rules that govern our bodily frame are the same to-day that they were in the beginning of mankind, for that physical frame has suffered no change. The laws of generation, birth, nutrition, growth, decay, and death have the inevitability of natural law. Such physical laws are like all other rules which we call natural laws. They are fixed and unalterable by human effort. Violation of those physical laws produces physical results. But human laws have none of the inevitability of natural laws. They may be violated without any physical effect on the violator, for they attempt to make or are a standard of conduct of human beings toward one another.
Yet there was a time, before man had developed the mental faculties necessary to produce consciously purposeful laws, when the rules that regulated human conduct in the social state had all the sureness and inevitability of natural law, for the laws existed merely as customary animal reactions to surrounding conditions. If, to obtain a better perspective in looking at this matter, we should go back to a time preceding the existence of human beings on the earth, we should find ourselves toward the close of the vast geological age that Edition: Nature had then completed her highest and most successful experiment, prior to the advent of human kind, in creating miniature animals suited to live upon this earth in a closely knit social community.
Lawyers have never written legal history in a large way. The philosophical histories of the law have been the work of philosophers and metaphysicians, who have succeeded in rendering legal science unintelligible to lawyers and laymen alike. That coming added merely another kind of animal who knew neither philosophy nor metaphysics, but who had certain laws.
They had then become, and they still remain, most successfully adapted to conditions. To these animals the Wise Man in Proverbs tells us to go for wisdom: But ants are more than a model for reclaiming the sluggard: Lessons of wisdom in the sphere of law, little dreamed of by the Wise Man, may also be obtained by going to these lowly insects. It is not paradoxical even to speak of the jurisprudence of ants. They are, indeed, as the great Dramatist says:. They have a polity of their own through which their communes exist and prosper under a set of laws which provide for the perpetuation of the society, the care and rearing of the young, and the provision of food by artificial means for the support of the community—a set of laws so successful in operation that ants are by far the most numerous of all the animal inhabitants of the globe and are spread almost as widely as men in climates the most diverse.
While not domesticated as are their cousins, the bees, they have been a source of perennial interest. The vast amount of writing upon them, recording in many volumes the results of observation and experiment, enables one to speak with certainty regarding these small creatures. The humor of Mark Twain upon the stupidity of ants cannot be considered valuable in a serious discussion. I need not comment upon the well-known facts that ants are insects allied to the other Hymenoptera like the bees and wasps; that but one of the community, the queen, produces any progeny; that the community is divided into defined castes of wingless and aborted females, who are the workers, and winged males, who are an idle and worthless class, except as to the one which fertilizes the queen, whereupon the useless herd of drones is killed, submitting to this fate with resignation.
The ants select places for building the communal dwelling with great care and judgment in reference to drainage and the nature of the soil. Rooms are provided in the general pueblo, so to speak, for use as nurseries in the rearing of the young as well as for the storage and preservation of food. Two of the notable advances of the human race toward civilization were the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plants, yet the leaf-cutting ants, in rooms provided by them in the communal dwelling, fertilize their darkened fields and cultivate minute plants that furnish a store of food.
Likewise the honey ants, who live mainly upon the sweet juices of trees and plants, have their droves of aphides, which live upon and secrete for their ant-owners the sweet saps of trees. These droves are herded and regularly milked by the worker ants. They are in every sense the domesticated animals of the ants. Then, too, these astonishing ants have learned the lesson of communal sanitation. Personal cleanliness and cleanliness of the dwelling are rigidly enforced among them.
They are indefatigible in removing all Edition: They even harbor beetles, it is said, in their nests, who are kept for the purpose of removing the communal garbage. The homes are regularly closed and sealed each day, and as regularly opened, and sentries are posted for guarding the gates. Human maintenance of roads is a comparatively late development of civilization. The ants, however, have their made roads stretching from their homes in all directions, which seem to be laid out with care and which they follow in their food or predatory excursions.
When, in making a road, they come to a rill of water, they tunnel it in true engineering fashion and maintain the tunnel. The building of a cylindrical arch is a great invention of our race, but the ants were doing it before the lowest type of humanity appeared on this planet. The leaf-cutting ants are ingenious enough to sew leaves together to suit their purposes. The ants have their predatory instinct against strangers, just as our human race had and still has it.
A column of driver ants on the march, devouring every creature they meet, is probably the fiercest carnivorous horde on this globe. A settled tribe of ants has its scouts who, like the scouts who spied out the Promised Land, go forth to look over the land and, when they find a commune of another tribe such as they desire to attack, rush back to the main body of the tribe and make some report; then the army, in a scene of frantic excitement, imitated in our cities when troops go forth to war, begins to form.
The whole tribe, except the drones, rushes forth from its dwelling and takes up its march; it arrives at the place of attack, and a sudden savage onslaught is made. The tribe that is attacked fights gallantly for its homes and firesides. This is very like the Athenian conquest of the island of Melos, as related by Thucydides. It is very like the command to the Jews in Deuteronomy: The maintenance of slaves is probably the most curious anticipation of the ants.
The slave ants are obedient and hard-working; they seem to be satisfied with their condition and are devoted to their masters. Certain tribes of ants are perfectly helpless, and depend for their lives upon their slaves. The ants, of course, instinctively are seeking more workers, and the origin of slavery among men is precisely the same. As a patriot devoted to her tribe and homeland, the ant is a wonderful creature.
She knows no fear; she fights with devoted courage; she is eager for battle; she hurls herself upon the foe; she never retreats; either she dies on the field or she never leaves the field until the battle is won. The ant knows no good for herself as separated from the good of the community. If service be the test, she is entitled to the highest praise. She is an indefatigable worker and carries, for her, immense burdens. Her strength in proportion to her size is prodigious. If the burden is too heavy for one, two or more unite in the work.
Her readiness to sacrifice herself for the public welfare is amazing. With the altruistic civic service of the honey ants nothing in human life can compare. Certain of these workers act as reservoirs for food. They load themselves with sweet juices until their abdomens are for their size enormously distended; then they laboriously make their way to the home, and are helped by other ants up the wall of the room to the ceiling, and there they cling day in and day out until their store of honey is required by the society.
But at the same time this intensity of communal life and feeling results among ants, as it often has resulted among men, in a bitter hostility toward all stranger ants. We have seen how remorseless they are in sacking the home of another community and in reducing its dwellers to slavery. Many an experiment has shown that stranger ants introduced into an ant community are at once set upon and killed. It is a commonplace of observation of ants that the peculiarity of this organized community is that there is no apparent organization.
Each individual seems to act on his own initiative, without directions or orders. There are no superiors or inferiors. The ideal of absolute equality reigns.
There is no overlord, no standing army, no officers, no privates. There is a most effective government, but there are no governors. The varied and complicated facts of government in a great ant-city, its home-making, home-guarding, home-nurturing, its building of roads, storerooms, nurseries, and vast structures that, proportionately to the size of ants, are equal to great centers of human population, the gathering and distribution of supplies, the cultivation and storing of crops, the keeping of herds, waging of war, and utilizing of captives, are carried out with perfect regularity.
Is it not plain that ants can live and work without direction or guide because, acting by instinct, they all act precisely alike? It cannot be denied that this experiment of Nature is, to the extent that it has gone or can go, perfectly successful. The ants have certainly a considerable degree of what we usually call intelligence.
And this is so with many other animals. A herd of musk-oxen in the frozen north, when it hears the hungry cry of a band of wolves, throws itself into battle array. The bulls face outward in a circle, standing shoulder to shoulder and presenting a ring of menacing horns to the foe. The cows and calves are all protected inside the barrier of menacing horns. It seems difficult to distinguish this conduct of musk-oxen from that of a wagon train of emigrants, let us say in , crossing the western plains in the United States.
When an Indian attack was impending, the wagons were arranged in a circle with the human beings, the horses and cattle inside the circle. These two performances differ little in intelligence. The performances of the domesticated dog or the horse betray often the highest intelligence.
The amazing communal life and engineering skill and discrimination of the beavers are reserved for Edition: Similarly, the ant, when it decides to tunnel a stream or to select its home, acts with much intelligent judgment. It is apparent that the laws of social organization of the ant are suited only to a natural condition where the young are produced by the one ant queen.
The workers are all infertile, aborted females. The drones are killed at once after the queen has taken her nuptial flight. No possible dissensions in the community can arise like those of the bulls or stags or stallions fighting over the cows or does or mares. Nor can any question arise over property, for all the property connected with the community belongs to the whole community. This was the condition among primordial men. Every worker among the ants toils with all her might in obtaining the property, and all have equal access to it. Each ant acts as if its act could become a general rule of action, and this we shall see is true of all human primeval law.
The natural condition of absolute equality results from each ant having full liberty to act like every other ant. The intense devotion to the community, the total ignoring of the individual, the innate passion for acquiring property for the community, are fundamental instincts that must be developed by any social animal that requires the storing of food in order that the community may survive.
Every ant community acts on the seeming principle, so popular among Socialists or incompetents, that the society owes a living to each of its members. No trouble, even, can arise over the young, for they belong to the whole community and are the cherished possession of the whole tribe.
They have no parents, they are all orphans, and are brought up with the greatest care by the joint efforts of all the workers. Finally, the fact that these ants have continued in their habits of life without change through a million years indicates that the laws of social life that govern the ants have produced animals absolutely responsive and obedient to those laws. In other words, every ant is law-abiding. What, then, can be simpler to the reformer, than to turn humankind into ant-aping social communities and to make all men law-abiding?
Is it at all strange that the ideal commonwealths, which have been devised, borrow leaves from the book of the ants? All communal socialism is based upon the jurisprudence of the ants in an attempt to apply that Edition: It is assumed that, like the life of the ants, all there is to human life is the problem of enough to eat and a roof to cover our heads. This is true of savage men. This is the Marxian assumption applied to civilized men. Almost every new religion begins with this fascinating dream of goods in common, no contentions, no degrees among men, all naturally working for the common end.
The Socialists seem to look without disfavor even on predatory war, for this is the lesson of their exemplars, the ants. They find no place for the monogamous family life, for that is no part of the polity of the ants. Every ant society supports each individual ant.
That is the theory of Socialism. The problem of socialistic communism is a very simple one on paper. Let each human being become as purely responsive to conditions as the ant, let him attain the perfect self-discipline and self-control, the self-abnegation and self-surrender of the ant, the devotion to the good of the community which is the controlling spring of emmet life—let each human being cease to be individual, and Socialism and Communism are very easy to attain.
This means, of course, as we shall see, that the fundamental nature of the human mind as the ages have produced it, must be abolished. No one but an imbecile can hope for such a transformation or expect it. If every act of the ant were not what, for want of a better word, we call instinctive, the mental constitution of the ant would have been certain to change in the course of a million of years. We content ourselves with saying that it is the nature of ants to act as they do. The laws of ant social life are inexorable and incapable of being changed unless they be changed by some new natural condition acting upon the ant.
What we mean by this is probably the great generalization of Pascal, who was thinking of human beings: Perhaps a first custom, just as custom is a second nature. The lesson we can learn from consulting the ants is that habits of acting or customary modes of acting of even intelligent animals become so fixed that it is impossible that they should be altered by mere animals, and so far as man as an animal has come out of his remote past, he has come stamped with this instinctive tendency to continue in customary habits of acting.
But so far as he has become capable of altering his customary ways of acting, he has ceased to be a mere animal and has taken on, if you Edition: But we may be certain that he will not alter his methods of life except to the extent that he is compelled to go. He will cling to as much of his ancestral robe of habit as he can retain.
Next, we may say that every social community of animals, by the very fact of its individuals living together, develops in each individual by nature or by habit or by customary mode of acting, an intense tendency in each individual to preserve that social community as an organization. In order to preserve the community there must be a store of food for the winter, requiring most intense labor.
We shall find in primitive men these same instincts, the same tribal feeling, the utter lack of any conception of the individual. The individual counts for nothing in the preservation of the community. This is just as true as that in the animal, whether with or without a social organization, there existed the animal tendency to propagate its species, impressed upon every normal animal as a natural and ruling passion.
These two tendencies, to propagate and to continue the herd, continued to exist in men from their stage of mere animality, and the two together make up what may be called the basis of human community life as it came from the hand of Nature. Now at this point in the beginning of this history it is necessary to emphasize a fact as to ants and to make a distinction between their development and that of men.
In the case of the ants, their mentality and their rules of life have become precisely equilibrated to their physical surroundings. Just as surely as the moon, the other planets, and the earth are held in their orbits by the balance that has been reached in the natural forces that govern their movements, so the ants, by the condition of equilibrium which they have reached with reference to their natural surroundings, are rendered incapable of escape from, or of changing, their rules of existence and of conduct toward one another.
Man began as an animal, responding merely to his surroundings, and the fact that he so began has led the Behaviorists to assert that such he has always remained. Their favorite thesis is that the individual man to-day Edition: This is true in a measure, but since man became civilized, the exact converse is shown to be true by the history of the law.
Society now is what the individual man is making it. Somewhere in its development, by gradual and imperceptible degrees, the animal man passed from the stage of a brute wholly obedient to its circumstances and surroundings, to that of a being who, by his own purposeful mentality, could so alter the impact of his surroundings upon himself, that he could rise above the external world of the senses into the realm of the inner life of the spirit and could make it true that human society will become what the individual shall make it.
If it be said that this change of mentality is a mystery, the answer is that the change in mentality can be traced, that it is not nearly so great a mystery as the initial change from inorganic matter to organic life, that beginning of life in which all are compelled to believe. Human society has been altered and will continue to be altered and to be made still better as men continue to rise higher in the realm of that inner life of the spirit.
The world of thought, the world of dream, and all the past and the future will become the possession of more and more men. We can anticipate that man will never become like the ant, perfectly law-abiding and perfectly fixed in his obedience to the rules of his social life, for should that day come man would be incapable of improving his rules of life and incapable of progress. Yet this does not mean that progress lies in violating the law, but rather in the capacity to alter the law.
It will always be true that the highest type of man will be the one who recognizes his duty to obey the laws, as witness Socrates who without compulsion or necessity, even probably against the desire of those who had condemned him, went confidently to his death rather than disobey the law.
And if we ask why man has not developed a set of laws that all men instinctively obey, without question and without faltering, the answer is Edition: He has all of the intelligence of the ant but he has one infinitely higher attribute, that puts upon him certain evils, but at the same time opens to him an endless heritage of progress. Every act of the ant is purely instinctive. She acts as she does because she cannot act otherwise. She has no choice.
Human beings also have instincts. The great mass of our daily acts is purely instinctive, the experimental psychologists now tell us. Some of those instincts have improved and grown better with the improvement of the race. Our emotions of fear or bravery, of pity or harshness, of sympathy or ill will, of envy or generosity, of love or hatred, are not reasoned conclusions.
When we are moved to tears or laughter, when our hearts glow and our eyes shine at hearing or reading of noble and heroic deeds, when we feel keenly the suffering of man or beast, when our minds are touched to generous compassion, we feel and act by instinct. Love for our parents or family, love of the home in which our eyes opened to the light, faithful affection for the streets over which our childish feet were led, and love for our country whose flag floating in the air is an inspiration and an undying hope, no less come to us by our instincts.
At the same time our self-assertion, our greed, envy, and covetousness, our feelings of self-interest and selfishness, our lowest attributes of sensuality or lust, all the influences of the body on the mind, are no less instinctive. Men mainly differ in the extent to which the intellect commands these instincts that have been inherited from the savage.
Had men remained the creatures of merely instinctive intelligence they could doubtless have peopled the earth; they could have developed communities of a high order living under an absolute law reigning over individuals who would never violate the law. They would have developed a stability of institutions and thereby have become incapable of progress. But man has developed a higher type of mind capable of infinite expansion and of overcoming natural surroundings, and has thereby become able by his own purposeful exertions to keep constantly mounting to higher realms of existence.
While the communists have made an impossible application of the lesson of the ants, it seems possible that some philosopher, calling himself Edition: If men had remained without any reasoning power whatever, they would have been helpless to change. The philosopher Hobbes, who claimed to be a jurist, once cast his eye upon these natural communities of ants, at a day before the evolutionary conception was at all understood.
But Hobbes was definitely committed to the dogma that human law is a rule imposed by a superior ruler upon an inferior subject, and that not nature but authority creates law. This dogma long made jurisprudence a nightmare. No doubt he saw that the polity of the ants entirely refuted his theory of law, and it was too much to ask of a philosopher that he should abandon his theory out of a regard for facts.
The fact, however, remains that a large part of the law has always been dictated by natural causes and much of our jurisprudence is and must remain, however we disguise it, as inevitable as the jurisprudence of the ants. How much more inspiring it is to believe, as the story of the law proves, that the creature man has achieved his own destiny! Grant that he is obedient to natural laws so far as he must be, yet as a docile echo of those laws, by the force of reasoning power alone, he has steadily rounded and continues to round the vast orb of his fate.
No one can look at the story of the law and not be a firm believer in the future of the race. The informed lawyers, in spite of their often gloomy views, must be the true optimists. What we know and what we think is not a new fountain gushing fresh from the Edition: As what we think and say to-day will mingle with and shape the thoughts of men in the years to come, so in the opinions and views which we are proud to hold to-day we may, by looking back, trace the influence of the thoughts of those who have gone before.
After the earth passed from the Tertiary Age into what has been called by some the Quaternary Age and by others the Pleistocene, there came upon the earth this new type of animal, homo primigenius , which was to have such a marvelous career. There were certain things about these new animals that gave promise. Their ancestors had passed their lives in the trees, a habitat retained by certain men in New Guinea to-day who are enough advanced to use the bow and arrow, but such life for men of the present is a reversion. The first human beings had definitely abandoned the trees and had come down to the earth.
The hands of their hind members had been converted into feet, and this firm footing with the sigmoid flexure of the backbone enabled them to stand upright. It took, of course, ages to develop these physical changes, but at last there was a creature that a happy omen stood upright and could not only look the world in the face, but could turn his eyes upward to the stars. In the gradual change into men, the possession of hands and a life in the trees had given to those prior creatures and to their descendants an unexampled development of brain resulting from the rapid correlation of eye and hand and intense muscular activity.
Many eloquent pages have been written upon what the human hand has done for man and of its marvelous creations, but it is enough here to note this effect upon the Edition: In tracing the legal story of these primeval men it is necessary to keep clearly in mind the general facts and not to become involved in a mass of irrelevant details. A certain mentality, sufficient knowledge to obtain food, sufficient social instinct to keep them together in the group, sufficient animal cunning to avoid dangerous beasts, these primeval men, of course, possessed; but higher attributes they had none.
Naked, without fire or shelter, without defensive weapons, condemned to live through long ages before they could acquire even the simplest artificial aids to life, these poor, naked, helpless wretches, amidst the laughter of the gods, as the ancients said, entered upon their career of the conquest of the world.
All they had were their simple inherited animal instincts and their large brain structure. To speak of laws in connection with such beings is startling, but they had them—fixed, ineradicable customs that were written on their minds and which through our subconscious mentality often rule us to-day. But first it is necessary to get rid of an idea that has been of as much trouble to a true science of psychology as it has been to a true science of jurisprudence.
Man, they say, was created with a soul, by which is meant the mentality that men have to-day. No one is prepared to admit that brutes have what these people call souls, and if the human frame once housed a brute, that brute could not have had the soul of a man. There has been no change in the housing, but the mentality that animated it is a mentality that has changed from that of a brute to the reasoning mind of a man.
The history of law can deal only with facts, Edition: The change from primeval man to homo sapiens was a mental change.
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These people are always reasoning backward in a fuliginous misconception. Hence comes the futility of the so-called schools of legal philosophy. Considering this primeval man as he was, we must picture him as looking out upon a world of physical surroundings much what they are to-day. Earth, air and sky, sunshine and rain, hill and valley, all the works of Nature he saw. But to this brute, naked, without any storing of a food supply and without a fire, existence in any climate but a tropical one was impossible.
One winter would have destroyed the race. The mere fact of the condition of the newborn child makes it plain that man originated and lived for uncounted ages in a tropical clime. It is also a necessary inference that these men were dark in color. It happened that in that Pleistocene time a tropical climate existed over Europe, Asia, and Africa almost to the North Pole.
Snow and ice were unknown to primordial man. This original seat of man may have been in Africa, Asia, or Europe. Europe was joined to Edition: The British Isles joined the mainland of Europe and there is no impossibility in either place of origin. Not only were these men black in color and hairy beasts, but they had the faces of the anthropoids. They had sufficient knowledge to keep themselves alive, and hence they have survived.
They lived a community life, that is to say, they lived the life of the herd, a condition inherited from some former existence; they had reached the human stage with the ingrained instincts of social animals. The two basic instincts of course they had, first the instinct of all animals to propagate by the union of male and female, and the instinct to preserve the young. They had the instinct of all social animals to preserve the social organization, and this was an added tendency to preserving the young and protecting the females.
Expressed in a more general way, it is true that all social animals have the instinct of common action for the common good of the particular aggregation of which they are a part. Practically we may say that all the laws or rules of acting that existed among them were ways of acting as mere animals to propagate their kind, to cling together as a community, and to preserve the young. Ages ago the Roman jurist Ulpian laid it down that the basis of natural law for human beings was the union of the male and female, the procreation of children, and the protection and bringing up of the children.
The acquisitive instinct in these men was wanting, since they had no need for storing food. Being the creatures of instinct, they all acted alike, and, having no self-consciousness, knew not why they acted alike. The modes of conduct had all the inevitability of the customs of the ants, and like the ants they had no need for a guide or overseer or ruler.
Kings, chiefs, headmen were unthinkable.
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Like all other animals, they had not the slightest idea of how the offspring of the females were generated. Hence it is easy to see that there was no family organization, no distinctly marked off family group. Nor is it likely that there was any possession by males of particular females, nor was there any such idea as that of fatherhood. Promiscuity was necessarily the rule. When the evidence is examined carefully it points to promiscuity, but a promiscuity of the animal, which pairs for the breeding season, not the promiscuity of the prostitute. The fact must be kept Edition: The herd knew by instinct, just as musk-oxen know, that the mothers with their children must be protected, otherwise the herd would not survive.
They knew that on the children depended the future of the herd. Hence, by the working of natural laws, it is plain that the child for its early years at least would know its mother but it would have not the slightest conception of a father. The mother would know and nurture her child, and the social law was that the males protected the females and the young.
Language, except a few rude sounds, aided by signs or motions, was unknown among them, for the simple reason that language for its development requires a relatively higher type of intelligence. Language required not only memory but reasoning upon the products of memory. It was certain that when language should be developed there would be a word for a mother long before there was one for a father.
In fact some savages, which to-day remain sunk in primeval brutishness, have words for mother and for child but have never had any word for father. The conception even yet does not exist among such degraded savages. We are at present in this story where all men were equally degraded.
Law as we have it has a division that may not be entirely logical but it is exceedingly convenient. It is the division into public law, which governs the relation of the individual to the social group, and private law, which governs the relations of individuals to other individuals in the group. Among these first men, the region of private law had no material upon which to exist. There was no property belonging to individuals or families, nor was there any opportunity for property, hence there was no stealing, no personal property law, no real property, no contract nor tort involving an injury to property, or a violation of a property right; there was no family law of domestic relations of husband and wife, parent and child, for the loose relations of men and women left no field for such law.
There was no law either as to personality, since there was no such idea as personality. But they had the social instinct and it dictated that every member of the community must not be guilty of conduct such that, in the inherited Edition: The certain result of this instinct would be that they would all act alike.
One who did not act like his fellows must inevitably be forced out of the community. This, to a creature trained to live only as a social being, would be unendurable. If driven out of the community, where could he go? Even the drone ants, although they have wings to escape the wingless workers, who execute them, submit to certain death without hesitation and do this with entire willingness. Hence, from the social instinct, would come that deeply rooted tendency, which has never left man, to suit his conduct to that of his fellows, the desire to please and be pleasing to those with whom he lives in daily contact.